Torn Between Nations, Mexican-Americans Can Have Both

By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK

NEW YORK TIMES (FRONT PAGE STORY)

HOUSTON -- On the day she became a U.S. citizen seven years
ago, Ericka Abraham Rodriguez recalls, she felt a deep ambivalence,
her excitement tinged by a feeling that she was somehow betraying
her native Mexico. "I love both countries," said Ms.
Abraham, a 34-year-old freelance translator. "It was like
I was being asked to choose between my mother and my father."
But for Ms. Abraham and thousands of other Mexican-born Americans,
much of that inner conflict has been swept away in recent weeks
as they have flocked into Mexican consulates around the United
States and filed papers to officially reclaim their Mexican nationality.

Under a new and sweeping provision of Mexico's citizenship
laws, any person born in Mexico or born to a Mexican national
who has become a citizen elsewhere may now officially claim dual
nationality. The change entitles them to have Mexican passports
(while keeping their American ones) and broader rights to own
property and to work or invest in Mexico, though not to have
voting rights in Mexican elections. But many of those who are
applying say their overwhelming reason is not so much practical
as sentimental. Mexico is not unique in allowing dual nationality.

For years many naturalized Americans have also legally claimed
nationality or even full citizenship of the countries where they
were born, including Canada, Colombia, the Dominican Republic,
Ireland, Poland and France. Still, with the Mexican Embassy estimating
that 3 million naturalized Americans will claim Mexican nationality
over the next few years, the new law will in one swoop add by
far the largest number of dual nationals on U.S. soil, and it
has already begun to rekindle a debate that has coursed through
American history, over whether dual nationality undercuts the
meaning of citizenship.

Theodore Roosevelt once called dual nationality a "self-evident
absurdity," and other critics likened it to polygamy. Some
anti-immigration groups are incensed over the new Mexican law.
The president of one, Glenn Spencer of Voice of Citizens Together,
based in Southern California, described it as "nothing
less than a large-scale movement by the Mexican government to
reverse the results of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo."
Under the treaty, Mexico gave up much of what is now the American
Southwest after a war with the United States 150 years ago.

But while opponents say that dual nationality calls into question
an American citizen's central allegiance, proponents of the idea
argue that far from weakening the United States' societal fabric,
it may help to spread American values abroad. "We are working
from enough of a position of strength that we can be secure in
the sustainability of our system, even in the face of large numbers
of dual nationals," said Peter Spiro, a law professor at
Hofstra University who studies immigration and nationality laws.
"I think it works to our advantage to embrace the idea,"
he said. "You instill people with our constitutional values,
and then have them put those values to work back where they were
born. It certainly can be part of the strategy of enlarging global
democracy."

Naturalized Americans must take an oath of allegiance in which
they swear to "absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure
all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate,
state or sovereignty." However, the U.S. government
has not challenged dual nationality or even dual citizenship
(a stronger status allowing voting rights) of naturalized Americans
or native-born ones, who can claim nationality in some countries,
including Ireland, if their parents or grandparents were born
there. Also, communities of naturalized Americans who were born
in South Korea, India and China are currently pressing those
governments for dual-nationality rights.

Neither the State Department nor the immigration service keeps
statistics on the number of Americans, either native-born or
naturalized, who hold nationality elsewhere as well. Estimates
by several immigration experts ranged from 1 million to several
times that number. Many of those who have applied for Mexican
nationality in the weeks since Mexico's law took effect on March
20 insist that their doing so poses no conflict with their identity
as Americans. "The way I see it is that my heart is big
enough for one woman and my three children, with plenty left
over for two countries," said Jesus Veyna, a 41-year-old
bilingual teacher in the Houston public schools. He says he cannot
wait to return to Torreon, his Mexican birthplace, and show his
Mexican passport to relatives there who have jokingly called
him "gringo" ever since he became an American citizen
14 years ago. "I'll go there and I'll say, 'Soy mas Mexicano
que tu," Veyna said, or in English, "I'm more Mexican
than you."

At the Mexican consulate the other day, 59-year-old Magdalena
Flores Gonzalez, who came to the United States 33 years ago,
gave birth to and reared four children here, and finally became
a U.S. citizen in 1992, said the new law made her feel that she
could restore a piece of herself. "We were born in Mexico,"
she said, gesturing to others who were applying for nationality.
"This is all about going back to a reality, the reality
that we are Mexicans." Ms. Abraham, the translator who
originally came here as a college student, said she was proud
to be an American and the mother of another American, 3-year-old
Tasha Delenn (whose names come from characters in the "Star
Trek" and "Babylon 5" television series). Still,
she said, "When I gave up Mexican nationality, I felt
like a lost person. You lose part of your roots, part of your
history."

The new Mexican act revokes a previous law that forced anyone
who became a citizen of another country to give up their Mexican
nationality. The new law was passed after years of strenuous
campaigning, mostly by Mexican-born Americans, and was spearheaded
by Jose Chapa, a 78-year-old retired broadcaster in Chicago who
came to the United States from Mexico nearly 50 years ago.

Some see those efforts as a prelude to a broader push for
voting rights in Mexican elections, which, if approved, would
almost surely lead to the spectacle of widespread campaigning
in the United States by Mexican politicians seeking support from
the millions of voters who hold dual U.S.-Mexican nationality.
But adding voting rights has been resisted by Mexico's dominant
political party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI,
whose leaders perhaps feel that voters living outside Mexico
might be more likely to support other parties.

Mexican-born people living in the United States have already
applied for U.S. citizenship in record numbers in the last few
years, largely prompted by concerns over federal laws that cut
off benefits for legal immigrants. But some experts say that
Mexico's new law will accelerate that trend and increase Mexican-American
participation in the electoral process, because it removes a
psychological barrier that kept many Mexican natives living here
from applying for U.S. citizenship. Many had also been reluctant
to apply because they nurse dreams of making enough money in
the United States to retire some day in Mexico.

Until now, Mexican laws had prevented anyone who became naturalized
elsewhere from owning property on or near the coast or the U.S.
border, a requirement that sprang from security concerns after
the Mexican-American war in the 1800s.

In any event, present-day Mexican-born applicants for U.S.
citizenship have waited about 21 years on average to seek the
privilege, compared with about seven years for all other foreign-born
applicants, federal immigration officials say. "Before,
for many Mexican natives, it was like you're giving up your life,
your heritage, if you apply to become an American," said
Leonel Castillo, a federal commissioner of immigration and naturalization
under President Jimmy Carter and now an education adviser to
Mayor Lee Brown of Houston. "Now with this new law, they
don't feel that way," Castillo continued. "You won't
feel like you've betrayed your birth country. I think it certainly
means more of these people will become U.S. citizens, and that
will have a political impact, no question."

There are plenty of critics of dual nationality. "I
think the scenario describes somebody who is in effect hedging
their bets, which I think displays ambivalence about their identification
with the United States," said John L. Martin, special
projects director for the Federation for American Immigration
Reform, a group based in Washington that favors greater restrictions
in immigration. "I don't think there's any way that that
can be seen as healthy for American society."

Moreover, anti-immigration groups have jumped all over a comment
made in February by the Mexican consul general in Los Angeles,
Jose Angel Pescador Osuna, who spoke at a symposium tied to the
150th anniversary of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. "Even
though I am saying this part serious and part joking, I think
we are practicing la Reconquista in California," Pescador
said. At the consulate in Houston, where a large sign greeting
visitors says in Spanish "Your great nation wants you
as a Mexican: You decide," officials said they believe
the new law will promote better relations between the two countries.
"These people can be ambassadors," the consul general,
Manuel Perez Cardenas, said, gesturing to the applicants for
dual nationality. "They can build a bridge of friendship."

For now, the number of dual nationals in the United States
is clearly headed for a surge. And while critics contend the
status violates the oath of allegiance of new citizens, others
contend that the oath itself should be revised, perhaps with
a declaration of "core loyalty" to the United States.
"The fact is, right now, many new citizens feel compelled
to take an oath that they have no intention of respecting,"
argued Spiro, who said it was ridiculous to require new citizens
to renounce all "allegiance and fidelity" to their
native land. "And so, in their very first action as a United
States citizen, they're put in a position where they almost have
to commit perjury."